The Steroids Controversy: Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

HIGH POINT, N.C. — Conspiracy: an agreement between two or more people to commit an act prohibited by law or to commit a lawful act by means prohibited by law; also : the crime or tort of participating in a conspiracy.

Persecution: The act or practice of persecuting on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or beliefs that differ from those of the persecutor. The condition of being persecuted.

Prosecution: The act of prosecuting. The institution and conduct of a legal proceeding.

McCarthyism: The use of unfair investigatory or accusatory methods in order to suppress opposition.

All of these annotations can be directly associated to Barry Bonds. First the main stream media, then the fans, then essentially the nation and now the feds? Yes, Barry Bonds, the man who surpassed the 715 homeruns that Babe Ruth accumulated over his famed career has new worriment to face once again.

The soap opera continues with two new stars: Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Jason Grimsley and the good ol’ United States Government. The taxpayers of this country can sleep well knowing the federal government is strong-arming MLB into a “get the dirt” on Bonds campaign while also trying to and burn Bonds at the stake like the witches of Salem.

To “add insult to injury”, when Grimsley refused to co-operate with the feds, our great Federal Government felt the need to expose Grimsley and his own guilty steroid usage.

According to published reports, Grimsley was released by the D-Backs on Wednesday, a day after his home was searched by federal agents following his admission he used human growth hormone, steroids and amphetamines.

The raid — and Grimsley’s implication of other major league ballplayers — was the latest sign that widespread investigations into drug use by athletes are still active, even in the era of tougher testing. D-Backs GM Josh Byrnes said Grimsley asked for his unconditional release in meetings with team officials Tuesday and Wednesday.

According to court documents, Grimsley failed a baseball drug test in 2003. 13 federal agents searched his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., for six hours Tuesday, but they would not reveal what they found.

Investigators who cracked the BALCO steroid scandal in San Francisco said Grimsley initially cooperated in the probe but withdrew his assistance in April, prompting Tuesday’s search.

Authorities tracked a package containing two “kits” of human growth hormone — about a season’s supply — that was delivered at Grimsley’s house on April 19, court documents released Tuesday showed. Moments later, agents armed with a warrant offered him an option:

The choices: cooperate with their investigation into athletes using performance-enhancing drugs, or submit to an immediate search. Grimsley agreed to be interviewed.

He proceeded to detail his “receipt and use of anabolic steroids, amphetamines and human growth hormone over the last several years,” but said he went exclusively with HGH when baseball’s testing program began.Grimsley also identified several other players who he said had used or supplied the drugs, though their names were blacked out from court documents.

The list included a handful of former teammates and one player he identified as one of his “better friends in baseball,” adding that it was common knowledge that “Latin players” were a major source for amphetamines.

He also identified a personal fitness trainer to several major league ballplayers who once referred him to someone that later supplied him with an array of drugs.

The next day, the plot thickens: An attorney for Grimsley said Wednesday that federal agents tried to pressure the player into wearing a listening device in an effort to collect incriminating evidence against Bonds, the Arizona Republic reported.

“It was a specific effort to target Bonds,” attorney Edward F. Novak told the newspaper. “We were told that Jason’s cooperation was necessary to their case.”

Novak said Grimsley subsequently “was outed by the feds” because he didn’t cooperate, the Republic reported. They asked him specifically about Barry Bonds, and Jason said he didn’t know Bonds well and didn’t know if he did or didn’t use drugs,” Novak told the paper.

Investigators then asked Grimsley whether he knew any of Bonds’ teammates who might confide in Grimsley about the slugger’s alleged use of performance enhancements, Novak said. Grimsley refused, telling investigators that “baseball players don’t go around talking about who is using and who isn’t,” Novak added.

Now you tell me if this isnt some form of a conspiracy?

Once again, I must reinterate that Bonds has been accused but not convicted. Does he look guilty? YES. Does he have a lot of people around him that were convicted like Victor Conte? YES! But looking guilty or having people around you that have been convicted doesnt make you guilty.

Bonds is innocent until proven guilty not the other unlike what people who follow sports and people want to convict him. Why is Bonds being persecuted by the court of public opinion and the government trying to prosecute him with out evidence? Can the evidence really be there?

Can Mr. Bonds really have some deep dark secrets that have been revealed by a former player or teammate of his, a family member, friend, or colleague? Let’s examine the evidence to date:

1. No evidence was ever found in Barryï’s system, locker, home or belongings of any sort to this date.

2. No player, coach, trainer or anyone else has ever been found to have given Bonds any steroid or performance enhancing drug. Even Balco Owner/founder Victor Conte has said he has never given Bonds any steroid or performance enhancing drug.

3. The only thing Bonds is guilty of is unknowingly taking “the clear” or the steroid known as THG and said as much under oath at a grand jury hearing.

4. Of all of the players known to been found guilty of taking steroids or performance enhancing drugs, none of them have named Bonds or said Bonds took anything period.

5. Although several books are out talking about Bonds and steroid use, none of them have any concrete evidence on record that Bonds committed such an act.

The media, fans, MLB and even players past and present, persecute him and now the government is trying to prosecute him.

Once again, it seems as though Bonds is guilty with what I call “circumstantial rumors” surrounding his every move on and off the field but FACTS and the truth is the only actuality, appearance, authenticity, basis, or bottom line that is of any real merit or consequence that the previous assemblage needs to be concern with and judge him on.

As this article is being composed, former Senator George Miller who is leading the exploration into steroids in the game of baseball with Mr. Bonds as the archetypal “whipping boy”, sent a letter to Bond’s attorney requesting to speak with him on matters of steroids in the not so distant future.

I think everyone wants all profssional sports in general to clean up the steroid and HGH mess. However, with a interminable war in Iraq, with copious American men and women dying, excessive gas prices rising daily and other communal issues such as lack of health care for most Americans and other such concerns, it should make the continuous encroachment on Bonds and others inconsequential.

The badgering, aggravation, annoyance, bedevilment, bothering, disturbance, exasperation, hassle, irking and irritation of Bonds will not end but fundamentally it should.

In my opinion, using a McCarthyism approach to finding the truth about Bonds debilitates those who thinks he is guilty without the merit needed to make that accusation. It also denigrate the ostensible evidence that some would like you to exist.

Only time will tell what is the truth and fact about Barry Bonds. Let’s try and let the body of evidence manifest itself through the commission of conscientious people who really have the good of baseball as the lone animus of investigating Bonds and not the damnable mission of destruction and his annihilation and fall.